If you don’t catch the movie, you can always read the book (or just check out the customer reviews). From the Publishers Weekly review on Amazon:

Roberts’s sweetly vengeful dig at do-nothing husbands follows a smalltown knitting club of wives who are sick and tired of toiling over elaborate Christmas preparations that their husbands don’t appreciate. As they go on strike, the women try to stay in solidarity, while the husbands plan retaliation at the hardware store. Roberts revels in detailing the husbands’ awkward, often disastrous handling of tasks their wives habitually do for Christmas (taking the kids to see Santa, planning the party, doing up the house). By the end of this gently feminist sendup, each side learns to be grateful for the other’s efforts.

Most children and many women like elaborate Christmas festivities. Fine if you can and want to spend the money and time necessary, without getting stressed, getting into debt or having to do away with something more necessary.

I am no big fan of elaborate Christmas festivities. The perfect Christmas for me is going away to a hot climate for a yoga retreat (which is not cheap either, but healthier and more relaxing). I just arranged a Christmas dinner at work with some collegues forming the party committy. That was quite fun. We did the most work (buying food and drinks, renting the place, setting up the tables and the food and so on), but a lot of people chipped in preparing dishes at home, peeling potatos, staying afterwards to clean up and so on.

I am going to a hot climate to do surf school with the kids over Christmas/New Year this year.

Amen. If it doesn’t break the bank, or make her go nuts with stress, a little bit in moderation is fine. But when it gets to be so much that she becomes unbearable to be around, when she’s actually around because she’s too busy “helping” too many people that don’t want/need the help, begins to defeat the purpose of the whole season. I bet the Lifetime movie doesn’t show that part.

I wasn’t sure at first if this was one of your spoofs or if it’s for real. Is it really the husband’s fault if these women go apeshit for chintzy crap every Christmas? It’s not that hard to have a nice, simple Christmas, especially if you do some of the baking and prep in advance (that’s what freezers are for). Yeah, this is pathetic. I’m really not that big on adults buying each other junk for the sake of it either – some nice cheese or a book is the best route I think, so long as the book isn’t Eat Pray Love or The Power of Now.

This Lifetime channel is crazy. I’ve never actually seen it (thank you Jesus), but it sure does sound asinine. I don’t know, I’ve found that most men will help out with things if you just ask them. Some need a little more prodding than others, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked a man to help me with something or to do something for me and had him say, “Piss off, do it yourself.” Seriously, who are these people?! Where do they find these dads who make a pig’s ear of taking the kids to see Santa or don’t know how to put up a Christmas tree? WTF?

(note: the following does not apply to people who are legitimately unappreciated by the people in their lives.)

If someone (e.g. a bored housewife) is complaining her family doesn’t “appreciate” her swagging up the house for the holidays or some other massive effort, I might start to question why she’s doing it.

It’s been a pattern of behavior in my family for people to undertake big efforts and expect to be “loved” in return. And then predictably they are upset by the lack of fawning prostration and fall into a martyr complex. “I did this for you because I LOVE you, why can’t you appreciate it and show you love me back?!?” It’s a subconscious manipulation and a willful misunderstanding of love – a version of the old tell someone ‘I love you’ as a way of inducing them to say it back.

I have also seen this pattern play out in the relationships of friends and other families.

Love is not a rational choice, an equitable response to someone else’s actions. (People considering, or angling for, marriage might do well to grok this…no man “owes” you a ring in exchange for whatever you’ve done for him, and getting married is not a way to “reward” your lady for how great she’s been to you.)

In other words Bonnie Raitt was right – you can’t make someone love you.

If you are doing something for somebody where it’s not really their bag, in the hopes they’ll respond in kind, you should think about finding another way to express your love.

@ThagThis Lifetime channel is crazy. I’ve never actually seen it (thank you Jesus), but it sure does sound asinine.

What strikes me is that they do this with impunity. And it isn’t just this one channel. Check out the customer reviews for the book on Amazon. There isn’t any sense that this kind of chick crack is dangerous. The book sells animosity for Christmas, and they all think it is cute and heartwarming. And no one points this out. This isn’t just one TV show, channel, or book. This is our entire society.

@Badger NationIt’s been a pattern of behavior in my family for people to undertake big efforts and expect to be “loved” in return. And then predictably they are upset by the lack of fawning prostration and fall into a martyr complex.

The awful handmade Christmas sweater comes to mind. But I spent so many hours gluing reindeer and glitter on the sweater. You have to wear it. Sure. Right after you wear those wooden shoes I made for you…

“Love is not a rational choice, an equitable response to someone else’s actions.”

The second clause of that sentence is spot-on, but it’s the word “equitable” that makes it so. Love can be rational, and a response to someone else’s actions, but that’s because it’s through someone else’s actions that we learn about their virtues and values, and see if they match our own.

@David Collard“gently feminist”. Now that is an oxymoron for the ages.

I liked that too. Not to mention these feminist women are all busy baking and cooking in 2010! I kind of understand how this nonsense sold in the 1970s. But if it still sells in 2010 it will sell in 3010. What will stop women a thousand years from now from electing traditional roles and then bitching about them?

I know this doesn’t apply to the women who read this blog. If you liked this kind of stuff you wouldn’t be reading my site.

There isn’t any sense that this kind of chick crack is dangerous. The book sells animosity for Christmas, and they all think it is cute and heartwarming.

I try not to pay much attention except to acknowledge the whole culture is effed up; it’s too depressing, so I just do my best to limit my interactions with and unwitting absorption of it. Probably down the road when I see TV again, as always happens after a long break from it, I’ll be shocked anew at how bad it got since the last time I watched anything people call “entertainment.” This chick crack is no better than pornography.

I think that love IS a choice though; these women are not choosing love but a kind of mercenary relationship characterised by complaining about how they imagine they come up short in every exchange.

Don’t get me wrong – I like the glitz of Christmas, within reason. I also don’t have the discipline to accomplish the cooking, decorating etc so I am thankful other people want to take that on.

But if you’re undertaking a big effort expecting thanks from someone else, you better make sure it’s something they want. If hubby wants a small unadorned tree and a grilled steak for Christmas dinner, you aren’t going to get much out of him roasting a ham and flooding the house with tinsel and bunting – I stand by my previous comment that a lot of this “frustration” is a failed attempt to extract love from your other half.

Missed in all this is this one line. If you would understand WHERE feminism comes from, it’s from husbands having abandoned headship of the family to go off every day to a cubicle farm to earn money to pay for the house and all that crap in it. Men allowed their roles to be defined as “provider;” it’s not a great leap from that to see that it makes sense to substitute welfare for a husband, as was done tragically to black families in the 60s. Working for a corporation with little control over your own destiny can certainly appear to be “do-nothing.”

I would guess that no Amish women think of their husbands as “do-nothing.” Of course, those women are, at the same time, working hand-in-hand with their men at building the family living and raising the next generation. It’s little surprise that their fecundity FAR exceeds that of the cubicle dwellers.